Letters: Obama's fly-by-night health care

In this Oct. 1, 2013, file photo, clinical applications counselor Rachael Richardson, left, works with Louis Peters at the Henry J. Austin Health Center, in Trenton, N.J., as he and others fill out papers to sign up for new plans through a health insurance exchange. Despite anecdotal evidence of high interest and the political stakes attached to President (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

Obamacare flies [Business, Oct. 7]?” comparing Obamacare to airline deregulation, is beyond any semblance of credibility. His idea apparently is that Obamacare isn't a massive regulation of the medical economy, but is actually a deregulation that resembles airline deregulation in the 1970s.

The airline deregulation bill was 50 pages long and devoted to eliminating government controls while maintaining safety standards. The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) is more than 2,000 pages long and leaves many regulations to be written by the Health and Human Services Department. Everything in Obamacare is dedicated to government control-ling citizens' medical care. The total pages of regulations at last count, as I understand it, exceeds 10,000 pages, all of it prescribing exactly what people can or cannot do.

Airline deregulation was a success, because it empowered consumers and airlines and disempowered the government Civilian Aeronautics Board. As Lansner notes, fares have fallen precipitously ever since, new airlines have started up, and old airlines have gone bankrupt. This is exactly the creative production and destruction that free markets provide.

Obamacare does the opposite. Government bureaucrats make the decisions. Not even Congress has a say in most details, except to exempt themselves. If medical care were treated to the same type of deregulation as airlines, people could buy whatever type of insurance they want, including no insurance, and providers would be able to offer myriad insurance and medical-care options. In other words, this would require repealing Obamacare and removing some previously unnecessary regulations.

I guess columnists are supposed to be controversial, but there is a difference between controversy and pure fantasy.

New Abortion dangers

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Bev Cielnicky, president, Crusade for Life: Gov. Jerry Brown signed two bills that take away the few safeguards women who seek abortions had in California [“New law expands who can perform early abortions,” News, Oct. 10]. AB154 legalizes abortions by nonphysicians, and AB980 reduces medical standards for abortion clinics. So now our taxes not only pay for the most abortions per population in the country, but we have some of the most dangerous abortion laws in the nation.

California citizens are now more likely to be aborted if unwanted by their mother even though they can inherit property and are considered murdered if killed without the mother's consent in this state. How crazy.

Next year we will have a chance to change the governor and Legislature. Get registered, and vote for life.

More accounting tricks

ORANGE, Oliver Watson: Accounting Professor Christopher R. Petruzzi offers an Obama-like solution for raising more money to pay for community college tuition [“Two-tiered tuition,” Letters, Oct. 5]: increase tuition by 35 percent, use the American Opportunity Tax Credit to offset the cost for students below a specified income level and offer scholarships to pay the tuition increase for the other students.

This implies that students qualifying for the offset pay more tuition, but recaptures those costs at tax time via the tax credit. For students not qualifying for the tax credit, their scholarships would offset the additional tuition – which implies they are not paying more tuition into the system. So the net gain in funds into the community colleges has to come from lower-income students. This is a clever accounting trick. There is no free lunch. The American Opportunity Credit is a refundable tax credit that can reduce one's tax liability below zero. Someone still has to pay the federal taxes to fund this scheme.

Petruzzi argues the state has left several billion dollars of federal subsidies on the table over the last 15 years. However, his rationale just shifts more costs to the growing federal government budget.

WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Letters to the Editor: E-mail to letters@ocregister.com.
Please provide your name, city and telephone number (telephone numbers will not be published).
Letters of about 200 words or videos of 30-seconds
each will be given preference. Letters will be edited for length, grammar and clarity.

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.